Sunday

After last week’s big shakeup at the State House, local emergency rooms might be expecting an influx of patients with progressive whiplash.

After last week’s big shakeup at the State House, local emergency rooms might be expecting an influx of patients with progressive whiplash.

A week ago, Rhode Island had a House speaker from the liberal East Side who was the key to legalizing same-sex marriage. And progressives such as Rep. Edith H. Ajello, D-Providence, and Rep. Christopher R. Blazejewski, D-Providence, held positions of power at the State House.

Today, Rhode Island has a House speaker who’s delivering a pro-business message of slashing taxes and regulations. And the new House Judiciary vice chairwoman is none other than Rep. Doreen M. Costa, R-North Kingstown, a former state GOP finance director and former Rhode Island Tea Party media adviser who is one of the state’s leading gun-rights advocates.

What a difference an FBI raid at the State House can make.

The March 21 raid on then-House Speaker Gordon D. Fox’s office and home caused seismic shifts in Rhode Island’s political landscape, prompting Fox to step down from the speaker’s rostrum and touching off a Machiavellian leadership battle. (On the State House Richter scale, the Fox-quake has already shaken things up far more than the Celona and Martineau tremors.)

But as rapid and unexpected as the changes have been, it’s not like Little Rhody went from Berkeley to Alabama overnight. And while the shift from Fox, D-Providence, to new House Speaker Nicholas A. Mattiello, D-Cranston, has real consequences, the House is about the same as it ever was.

From the outside, Rhode Island looks like a deep-blue state, a bastion of liberalism.

Among voters, Democrats outnumber Republicans 291,122 to 74,772. Among state legislators, Democrats outnumber Republicans 101 to 11. And in the 2012 election, Hawaii and Vermont were the only states to give President Obama a larger margin of victory than the 27.9-percentage-point gap he enjoyed in Rhode Island.

But there are other numbers to consider. While Rhode Island has 291,122 Democrats, it also contains 370,238 unaffiliated voters. Stat-geek Nate Silver has called Rhode Island the most “elastic” state, meaning “a large swatch of its electorate are persuadable voters unaligned with either political party.”

And data-crunchers at the American Legislatures project say Rhode Island has the least polarized state legislature in the country, meaning the average ideological difference between the median Democrat and the median Republican is the smallest here.

So the General Assembly certainly contains some true progressives and some true conservatives. But it also contains a large number of lawmakers who fall somewhere in the middle of that continuum. In other states, they might be Republicans. In Rhode Island, they’re Democrats. For instance, Rep. Arthur J. Corvese, of North Providence, is about as socially conservative as they come, and he’s a Democrat.

While Fox’s constituency in House District 4 was liberal, his constituency on the House floor was much different. And during his tenure, the legislature passed a voter-ID law, overhauled the state pension system and slashed the top personal-income tax rate.

Of course, the legislature also enacted an education-funding formula during his tenure. And Fox, who is gay, provided crucial leadership in legalizing same-sex marriage — a remarkable victory in part because the Catholic Church fought the same-sex marriage bill, and this is one of the two most Catholic states in the country (along with Massachusetts).

Undoubtedly, Fox headed a more progressive leadership team than we’ve seen in recent history, and that mattered in some very real ways. But the makeup of the House membership remained more or less the same, and Mattiello’s ascension can be viewed as a return to the more moderate-to-conservative House leadership personified by former Speaker William J. Murphy, D-West Warwick.

Indeed, Mattiello was an usher at Murphy’s wedding in 1994, and he told The Providence Journal’s Katherine Gregg that he still thinks of Murphy as a brother. Legislators say that in 2010, when Fox succeeded Murphy as speaker, Murphy insisted that Mattiello fill the No. 2 position as majority leader.

And now Murphy is a State House lobbyist whose clients include the 2nd Amendment Coalition and Advance America, Cash Advance Centers Inc., a payday lending company. So if Costa’s appointment didn’t make it abundantly clear, the House is not about to pass a ton of gun-control bills, and this doesn’t look like the right day for payday legislation.

Over the years, Mattiello has supported some bills favored by liberals. In the most high-profile example, he voted for the same-sex marriage legislation, and he said that as a result he was removed as a lector at the Catholic church where he grew up. “If you were given a heterosexual attraction by God, or wherever it came from, you deserve happiness,” he said in a compelling floor speech. “And if you were given a same-sex attraction, you deserve the same exact happiness in our community and in our society today.”

But from the minute he stepped up to the rostrum, Mattiello has zeroed in on “jobs and the economy.” He said he plans to “look at” the corporate tax, the estate tax and the sales tax, aiming to be “competitive regionally.” And he said, “We must provide relief from our overbearing regulatory structure.”

Mattiello’s message drew praise from Laurie White, president of The Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce. “It’s clear that he is focusing on the right issue, which is the business climate,” she said. “That is the fundamental underpinning of everything. If we don’t get that right, we’ll continue to lose jobs and investment.”

While he’s winning applause from the business community, Mattiello won the speaker’s race with the support of some lawmakers with union connections. For instance, new House Majority Leader John J. DeSimone, D-Providence, has said he has no plans to resign as lawyer for the Providence Teachers Union, and his voting record will never be confused with that of a progressive such as Ajello. So while it’s a key Democratic constituency, labor is not monolithic, and “union” does not always equate with “progressive.”

Speaking of progressives, Mattiello’s early moves drew criticism from Samuel W. Bell, leader of the Rhode Island chapter of the Progressive Democrats of America. “We are obviously deeply disappointed in Speaker Mattiello’s positions,” he said. Mattiello has an A-plus rating from the National Rifle Association, has backed “anti-choice” legislation and has opposed “repealing tax cuts for the rich,” he said.

Bell noted that Rhode Island gave President Obama his third-highest margin of victory in 2012, saying, “The people of Rhode Island are very progressive. We are one of the most liberal states in the country.”

But Bell also acknowledged that when he talks to progressive activists in other parts of the country, they are fighting against Republicans on issues such as voter-ID laws, assault-weapon bans, abortion legislation and “tax cuts for the rich.” If there are fights within Democratic ranks, they’re usually between the party’s “Wall Street” and “Elizabeth Warren” wings, he said. But in Rhode Island, Democrats are fighting against Democrats on “core Democratic issues,” he said.

So is Rhode Island really the deep-blue state, the bastion of liberalism, it can appear to be from the outside? “I would say the people of Rhode Island are just as liberal as you think they are,” Bell replied. “But state legislators are not.”

Some of the data suggest a more complex picture. But there’s only one sure way to find out: It’s an election year — let’s vote.

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